{"id":58976,"date":"2025-04-29T01:55:16","date_gmt":"2025-04-29T01:55:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/58976\/"},"modified":"2025-04-29T01:55:16","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T01:55:16","slug":"german-and-austrian-ministers-cancel-syria-trip-because-of-possible-terrorist-threat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/58976\/","title":{"rendered":"German and Austrian ministers cancel Syria trip because of possible terrorist threat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-ad__placeholder__logo\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/logo-euronews-grey-6-180x22.svg.svg+xml\" width=\"180\" height=\"22\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\"\/>ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>The German and Austrian interior ministers have cancelled a planned trip to\u00a0Syria because of a possible threat to their delegation, German authorities said.<\/p>\n<p>Germany&#8217;s Nancy Faeser had planned to visit Damascus with her Austrian counterpart Gerhard Karner on Thursday, with a German military plane set to fly Faeser&#8217;s delegation into Syria from Jordan.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/icon-cross-10x10-grey-6.svg.svg+xml\" width=\"10\" height=\"10\" alt=\"Close advertising\" fetchpriority=\"high\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n<p>But her ministry said that the two ministers decided to break off the trip before the flight could depart from Amman &#8220;because of concrete warnings by German security authorities of a terrorist threat&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>It added in an emailed statement that a threat to the delegation itself couldn&#8217;t be ruled out and that it would have been irresponsible to go.<\/p>\n<p>The trip hadn&#8217;t been announced ahead of time.<\/p>\n<p>The two ministers had planned to speak with the interior and foreign ministers of Syria&#8217;s interim government and with representatives of UN agencies.<\/p>\n<p>Germany in particular has been a major destination for\u00a0Syrian refugees over the past decade, with the Interior Ministry saying almost a million Syrians currently live in the country.<\/p>\n<p>German officials said the planned talks were supposed to centre on security issues and on &#8220;perspectives for the return of Syrian refugees in case of stabilisation and peaceful development in Syria&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Faeser suggested in January that some Syrian refugees in Germany may have to return home under certain conditions.<\/p>\n<p>The Interior Ministry also said that Germany and Austria are working on finding a way to deport Syrians who have committed serious crimes or are deemed a security threat back to their homeland as soon as possible.<\/p>\n<p>Last week, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euronews.com\/my-europe\/2025\/03\/20\/germany-reopens-damascus-embassy-13-years-after-syrian-war-forced-its-closure\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Germany&#8217;s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock visited Damascus<\/strong><\/a> and\u00a0reopened the Germany embassy there, 13 years after it was shut in the early days of Syria&#8217;s civil war.<\/p>\n<p>Baerbock, who met interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa and others, said her trip was meant to renew the message that &#8220;a political new beginning between Europe and Syria, between Germany and Syria is possible&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ADVERTISEMENT The German and Austrian interior ministers have cancelled a planned trip to\u00a0Syria because of a possible threat&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58977,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[7907,2000,299,1824,6500],"class_list":{"0":"post-58976","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-austria","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-germany","12":"tag-syria"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114418766643173575","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}